My Blog

Tag: Communication

  • Operation iPhone 3G

    Of course today was all about the iPhone. As you would expect considering Australia finally got the iPhone 3G.

    My wife had a plan of attack which involved going to work earlier then usual, so that she could go join the queue at Apple Store Sydney. All was going well until she woke up a little earlier then she needed, and the queue was reported to be about 25 or so people. So she made the decision to go another hour earlier then planned.

    I woke to find her in the process of getting ready and offered to drive her into the city, rather then catch a train at 4am. So I got up and changed, then headed in. The traffic was great, as we had none. Of course you’d expect that for 4am in the morning. Dropped her off out the front just before 5am. She joined the queue estimated she was about 26th or so. Felt really happy about leaving earlier and getting a reasonable spot.

    By the time I got home at about 5:40am, she was telling me the queue had doubled. Didn’t surprise me. She also mentioned camera crews came down sometime later and the queue just kept getting bigger.

    Eventually store opened at 8am, and she managed to get in and directed as required. Unfortunately she didn’t come out with her iPhone 3G 8GB until about 11am. If people didn’t hear, the Optus backend systems had some serious performance issues, not to mention network connectivity. So it took basically from 9am to 11am just to process her application etc.

    Even with the wait, she was still excited. She was totally happy to finally have gotten an iPhone 3G. Plan seemed to have work. Now she has her iPod and phone in one device. Exactly what she has been waiting on.

    I must say, I do like it too. Never had a chance to play with one before in detail and now I have. It is as good as the keynote from Steve Jobs last month.

    Won’t post any pictures, as we all know what it looks like. It’s currently sitting in an iPhone dock on her desk. She bought one of those too, along with a nice leather cover and some screen protectors.

    And the funniest thing to happen today would be the sms she got while setting up her contacts from a number in which we hadn’t associated with a contact yet. It read “How is your iPhone?”. She replied and said “Who is that? and how do you know I have an iPhone.” Turns out the person who sent it is a friend of course and they saw her on the Channel Nine news standing in the Apple Store line for iPhones. Channel Nine did a quick story on the iPhone and showed the start of the queue out in front of the store from the morning. And they seen her. Hahaha.

  • Apple iPhone 2.0 Applications

    I am blown away by the number of applications that will be available by the Apple App store. The keynote that shows a sample of these applications is simply amazing.

    This device is going change how a lot of us work and communicate.

    I’ll consider the purchase of one in the near future.

  • Phone fixed and ADSL not affected

    The phone service was fixed by about 10am yesterday. It would appear the fault was probably at the RIM as we thought. Which ironically means I was entirely correct in saying the DSL tech who did the ADSL activation caused it.

    All fixed, but it did take them longer then expected. At least ADSL remained intact.

  • ADSL provisioned… at a cost

    My wife had a nice little argument with a Telstra Supervisor just on Tuesday. It appears our attempt got parked. So she proceeded to let them have it.

    By the time that 30min call ended, they had found a port and set the service to provisioning.

    Wednesday evening it had DSL sync and working.

    Unfortunately it came at a cost. That cost was the fact the foolish person who provisioned it, managed to screw our voice service. Yes, you guessed it. We now have no dial tone on our phone service. So I can’t make calls or even accept them.

    Logged a fault today, they said it will be fixed by Tuesday. Of course I got the usual spill about troubleshooting, so I repeated myself a few times to indicate it was fine until your incompetent tech attempted to enable DSL. Before that, never had a issue. After that, no dial tone. Unbelievable.

    In any case the ADSL1 1500 line speed seems fine. It’s stable and as fast as it should be for this service. Attainable line rate appears to be not crash hot, but it’s fine for the service I have. So that’s good enough for me. Just a real shame they had to kill our phone service in the process. Wish I checked it 2 days ago. We don’t usual use the land line during the week..

    In other news though, 2 days after my wife’s call the Telstra Wholesale report came out and indicated that several days earlier the RIM had 40 available ports. Be interesting to see how many of those are still available in the new report due out on Monday I believe.

  • Telstra Bigpond tatics

    Those who have been following the Broadband saga would know I was waiting on Telstra to provide more ADSL ports to our local RIM.

    Our 3rd application attempt as

  • Still waiting for ADSL services

    Months and months later, I am still awaiting Telstra to provide ADSL port relief to our local RIM.

    We’ve been advised from Internode that Telstra is indicating end of March. Of course the last time I was advised something it came and went with no change. That was in January.

    I am really hoping that ADSL port relief happens real soon, you can only accept using unwired for so long.

  • Options when you can’t get ADSL

    The application was rejected, as per before. No ports available in the RIM, and well no ETA for upgrade. I guess we will just have to apply every 2-4 weeks until it happens. In the meantime I emailed the Federal Member, although that probably won’t do alot. I might look at getting some other affected people involved, soon as I determine what my best actions would be.

    In the meantime decided the best alternative is probably to pickup an Unwired modem and use Unwired. It’s not entirely ideal, as I can’t work from home. But I can atleast use the internet for various things as required. Further more it will allow us to get our guide data to our devices on the network that require it.

    I’ve since obtained a modem from a friend 2nd hand, just need to enable it and pay up for a plan etc. The only thing I need to do is save up to buy a router to run it, although in the meantime I might pull out an old machine and run Linux to do the job (until I can budget the cost of the router in).

  • Damn Telstra

    It would appear the local exchange or cabinet our phone runs too is out of ADSL ports on the CMUX, so no ADSL until it gets upgraded. Of course, no one can tell us when. Guess I will let the application stay in held state and stay in queue for an available port.

    With the estate booming, no paper pusher decided to upgrade the infrastructure, which is REALLY annoying. Guess I might write a letter to local member and start to annoy the right people.

    Damn Telstra.